


Better Days (Are Coming My Way)

by CaptainKaysno



Series: Kay's Non-Gabe Bingo [1]
Category: Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders
Genre: Angst, Blood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Multi, Mute Robbie Garcia, Nightmares, disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 10:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18548008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainKaysno/pseuds/CaptainKaysno
Summary: For @nongabebigbang bingo challenge! This fulfills the squares: 'Mute Character' and 'Nightmare'.___Robbie Garcia somehow made it out of Bangladesh alive but the nightmares will always find him. At least David and Diane won't let him suffer alone.





	Better Days (Are Coming My Way)

**Author's Note:**

> No main characters here friend. We stan minor characters like MEN. (also sorry for the summary! I really did try my best but I have no idea how to explain this fic)
> 
> Shoutout to the Non-Gabe Bingo for giving me the inspiration for this! A huge shoutout to @missingnolovesfic for being an excellent beta and a great friend and to @lunarlover12 for giving me a lot of encouragement to help me finish! <3 you both are rockstars.

The metallic taste of blood in his throat is the first thing that Robbie notices. It’s a taste he’s gotten used to in the past few months but right now it’s so overpowering he gags on it.

Or at least, he tries. As he goes to gag, his throat constricts around cotton. Cotton pushed down his throat so far that he can’t breathe around it. Cotton in his ears, leaving him to listen to the thunder of his heartbeat. Ropes tied tightly around his arms, so he can’t pull any of it out.

A thin film of tears is turning his vision watery and blurred as he tries to figure out exactly where he is. He starts panicking as he realizes he can’t remember how he got here. His toes flex on something coarse, his feet bare.

He stares down at the sand in front of him. Golden and rough and slowly turning red as the tide comes in.

Red. Why was it red?

He blinks away his tears and slowly manages to lift his head up to find an ocean made of blood. The scream he tries to let out gets stuck in his throat as he realizes that with every passing second the tide is pushing his way further. A slow creeping death if the strangulation doesn't get him first.

Either way, Robbie is about to die alone.

Robbie doesn’t want to die alone.

He wants David. The best friend he’s ever had and never deserved. He wants his kind blue eyes, and he’ll even take his anxiety-ridden ramblings if he got to see him again. He wants one of the best men he ever knew by his side.

He wants Diane. The badass lady he convinced himself would be the ruin of him and David’s friendship and instead added yet another layer of warmth and friendship to it.

He wants the baby who he can hear from somewhere in the red tidal waves.

It takes a long moment for what that knowledge entails to fully hit him but once it does he starts frantically trying to scramble forward towards the bloody waves.

She wouldn’t be able to survive out there.

He falls to his knees as black spots slowly start overtaking his vision. He makes it a little further before falling flat on his face. The distance seems to stretch on for entirety when he barely manages to look up.

He dies with the sure knowledge that Baby R is going to die, too.

*

He wakes up with a startled breath getting caught in his throat.

His heartbeat is rushing in his ears as he desperately fights off the embrace of death. His feet hitting the carpeted floor as he races towards the room that holds one of the most important people in his life.

Her cries seem to echo through the door and right into his heart as he all but busts down the painted purple nursery door to get to her.

He sprints to the back wall where Baby R is and grips the railing of her pristine white crib as he stares at her.

Her startled blue eyes stare up at him. She seems to have stopped crying from the shock of having Robbie rush into the room but her lip is already quivering again. There are tears racing down her cheeks, and he watches as she bursts into even louder sobs.

His shaking hands reach down to grab her before he realizes that he’s shaking so hard he might drop her. He turns around, ready to race back to the master bedroom to find David and Diane standing in the doorway.

Both of them look disheveled. David’s curly hair sticking up every which way and the glasses that he only wears at home almost completely off his face. Diane doesn’t look much better. Her face is nearly white as she rushes to his side.

“Is she hurt?” she demands, frantically. Her hands frantically undoing the buttons of Baby R’s onesie. From behind them, David flicks on the lights, “What happened?”

Robbie doesn’t know what to say. He can practically hear the rusted cogs of his own brain slowly connecting the dots of what happened. He’d been in the middle of a nightmare, he heard Baby R’s cries through the baby monitor and his subconscious had ruthlessly left them both to drown.

It was all an overreaction to his own stupid brain.

He reaches down to where his phone or notepad would normally be before he realizes that he had left it charging on the side table of the bed that they all should currently be in. Diane has slowly calmed down as she sees that there are no visible marks on Baby R. Just the smell of a late night drop off. She turns to look at him again, the color slowly returning to her cheeks, “Robbie? What happened?”

He shakingly raises his hand and carefully spells out, _‘Nightmare. Sorry_.’

Her face slowly goes relieved before turning guilty, “Pretty bad nightmare this time huh??” She lays a hand on his shoulder, her hand is warm and comforting. Things that he doesn’t deserve for waking her up at the dead of the fucking night. She tries for a smile that wobbles a little at the edges, “Hey, don’t worry about it. We would have woken up from Robbie J’s crying. Isn’t that right, baby girl?”

Her hand slips off his shoulder and down so that she can pick up Baby R and bring her up and towards her shoulder.

“Robbie?” A voice says from behind him and Robbie nearly jumps out of his skin. He whirls around so fast that he nearly falls down to find David standing a safe distance away from him. He’s holding Robbie’s phone out towards him. “I got your phone, man.”

Robbie nods his thanks and shakingly takes it before standing uselessly in the middle of the room.

“Hey, do you wanna go back to the bedroom?” David asks. Robbie must have a panicked expression on his phone because David just says, “Alright, how about the living room?”

‘ _Yes, please_.’’ Robbie signs, relieved.

David nods, turning around and heading towards the living room. Robbie glances towards the baby changing table where Diane has moved Baby R’s before following him like a moth to light.

He gets there to find one of his notepads and pens laid out neatly on the coffee table. He sits down on his end of the couch as David looks for the remote in the couch cushions. He pulls out two teething rings, a pair of Diane’s sunglasses, and a few pens before he finally finds it. 

“I knew it,” David hisses, victoriously. He all but throws himself on the couch in the obvious position of the stereotypical middle American dad position. H flicks through the channels before he puts it on one of those housing shows and Robbie huffs. 

‘ _At least_ ,’ Robbie scribbles into his notepad, ‘ _Know we know for sure that we’re old people huh?’_

David reads it and laughs, “I think we already knew that but it is always nice to have confirmation huh?”

Robbie gathers up a smile for him and David returns it in beaming force before suddenly getting serious, “I saw you tell Diane that you had a nightmare, uh, do you wanna talk about it?" 

There is almost nothing that David wants to do less than talk about his nightmares with David. His friend already blamed himself endlessly for David’s near death and then five-month stay in a Bangladesh hospital where he was in a coma that he’d somehow miraculously woken up from. If he knew about nightmares of choking to death or drowning in an ocean of blood then it would screw him up big time. 

He had a therapist to talk to about this. 

The same fucking therapist who was supposed to be helping with this shit. The goddamn therapist who had reassured him on the last visit that he was on his way to recovery.

The therapist who he’s never gonna see again if he has anything to fucking say about it.

‘ _I’m never going to therapy again_ ,’ he scribbles out in a nearly illegible scrawl and holds out his notepad towards David who has to squint in the darkness to read it.

“What?” he squawks in protest when he finally manages to make it out. Robbie leans over and turns on a lamp instead of relying on the light from the hallway. “Why? Did you have a nightmare about the therapist or something?”

Robbie glares at him and David waves his hands helplessly back at him. “I just don’t know where this coming from? You seemed alright when you got back from your appointment earlier!”

He’s not wrong. The session that they had today was mostly just talking about the frustration that Robbie had in learning in sign language and the insecurity he felt when people stared at his the scar on his neck. Nothing that he thought would cause this kind of nightmare.

Robbie holds his hand out for his notepad and David immediately hands it over.

‘I _want to not be having them anymore,_ ’ Robbie scribbles, ‘ _I thought therapy was supposed to do that! You’re not having them and waking everybody up in a panic every third night."_

David reads it thoughtfully before handing it back to him, “I had nightmares every night for three months,” he says, voice going slightly hushed like he's sharing a secret. “Diane had to sleep in Robbie’s room when the sleep deprivation was getting so bad for her that she nearly passed out from it.”

This is a piece of new information about the Curry household that he missed. He stares at David who has his head tilted to the side, “I- I haven’t wanted to tell you because I didn’t want to think that I was — I don’t know — like I was making this whole thing about myself. That would be a real dick move but I don’t know if that’s been helping you out that much. You keep comparing your recovery to mine and that’s not fair when I’ve had a lot more time to deal with it.”

Robbie grabs his pen and slowly writes down, _‘I’d like to know more about what it was like for you. It's been hard to feel like I'm doing this whole thing wrong and you've got it right?'_

David looks dangerously close to crying when he reads it, “Can I hug you?” he asks.

‘No homo?’ Robbie gleefully writes in huge letters.

The bitchy David look that he gets in return is a thousand times better than almost crying David that he been receiving, “We have had sex multiple times. I’m sad to inform you that we’ve crossed the rainbow in that respect.”

Robbie laughs silently and David cracks a smile before quietly asking, “Do you want a hug for real though?”

Robbie opens his arms wide and David all but throws himself in his arms.

“Aw!” Diane says from the hallway, Baby R held securely in her arms. Her smile is bright and sweet, “Do you have room for two more in this hug?”

“If it’s you two then always!” David says excitedly with Robbie nodding enthusiastically along. Diane laughs a little in response before walking forward and depositing Baby R into Robbie’s not shaking hands.

Diane sits down on the other side of Robbie, “You doing okay?” she asks, quietly, her hand coming up to tuck a piece of his hair behind one ear.

Robbie nods, gently bouncing Baby R in his lap. She gives him a soft smile and gingerly presses a kiss to his cheek. “I’m just so glad that you’re here, Robbie,” she whispers.

She’s kind enough to not mention the sudden tears that well up in his eyes. He doesn’t have the ability to tell her how glad he is to be here with the three of them, so he kisses her hair and hopes that she knows.

She smiles at him and rests her head on his shoulder before passing out just a minute or two later. Robbie throws his arm over the back of the couch, put his feet up on the coffee table and is gone to dreamland just a few seconds later.

Baby R is watching the muted TV with wide curious eyes one second and then when he glances down again she’s completely out.

Sleep never does come to him with the nightmare so fresh, but he does get to watch the sunrise through the wide windows of the Curry’s living room. He gets to watch it paint the room blood-red that slowly fades to a vibrant orange before it finally turns into the soft yellow light of true sunlight. The birds outside slowly begin to wake up and start trilling their songs.

Robbie watches the most important people in the world sleep into a new day and sends quick thanks to whoever was kind enough to grant him the chance to see this. He takes a deep breath, lets it out in a sigh, and then closes his eyes to join them.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! Leave me a kudos and comment if you did!


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